ON THE SET OF LEGENDS OF THE FALL
WITH "G" COMPANY

PART THREE - SECOND WEEK ON THE SET

ALL SMALL PHOTOS ARE THUMBNAILED - CLICK TO ENLARGE

Monday 16 August 1993

            During the entire week, the extras came in to work in the mid-afternoon, even though filming didn't start until midnight.  The reasons for the delays were not explained to the extras.  The long hours of waiting in the marquee tent were hard to take, though it seemed to the extras an easy way to extend their pay into overtime hours.  Many of the extras had by this time transferred to the day shift, where the scenes surrounding Samuel's death were filmed.  The principal actors were not seen by the extras on the night shift during the second week of filming.

          A complicated scene was filmed in which a group of soldiers was advancing to a shell hole.  The advance was filmed, the cameras stopped, and everyone was given a paper plate with a number on it to put on the ground to mark their spot.  The extras were then taken away, and a variety of body parts were put around the shell hole and an explosion filmed.  The extras came back afterwards, picked up the paperplates, and the cameras began filming again.  The end result was supposed to be a scene of soldiers advancing into a large explosion that kills several of them.  Like much of the footage, this scene never made it into the film either.

     Some of the "extras" in this scene were blow up dolls obtained from, as one of the assistant directors inelegantly explained to the extras, "sex shops."  The dolls were inflated and put into extra uniforms and used to represent corpses.  Close inspection revealed that the dolls were anything but lifelike, but were a convenient method of simulating something vaguely body-shaped.  The unconvincing shocks of bright yellow and orange hair were hidden with Service Dress caps.

Tuesday 17 August 1993

         During the day, several some excitement was raised among the "G" Company extras when rumours of a "close-up" shot of one lucky extra surfaced.  This author and several others sought out an assistant director, and after some vague instructions, each man was individually "auditioned."  The scene involved lying on the parapet of the trench and signalling down to an officer.  It was not sufficiently explained what the signalling was for or why the man was lying on the parapet, but several people auditioned, and a young extra with an English accent won out.

        The original script for the movie, as well as the storyboards for the war scenes, involved a soldier kicking a soccer ball into the air at the start of the scene.  One of the final scenes of the attack was to be the soccer ball coming to rest beside a dead Canadian.  The final film, as edited, makes the kicking of the soccer ball seem a little odd.   At one point the director was heard on the set to comment on how he wanted to emulate actual war footage as much as possible.  As soon as the men leave the trenches, one of them gets hit and falls back into the trench; this was based on famous footage shot during World War One.  The soccer balls, one would imagine, are an homage to the actions of at least one British unit, who, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, kicked soccer balls ahead of them across No Man's Land as a sign of contempt for the enemy.

         Other scenes filmed included the fixing of bayonets on rifles.  One of the "G" Company men proved less than adept at fixing his bayonet; he was instructed to keep his bayonet fixed and "pretend" to put it on the rifle with the others.  The extras were tightly packed into the trenches, with men of the leading waves perched on the scaling ladders and firing step.





        Several scenes were filmed, including some of the extras simply waiting in the trench, listening to the barrage.   The author took to wearing a green lanyard on his uniform, which the assistants on the set made him remove for these scenes, with the explanation that they did now want anything "too colourful" on the screen.  All extras were told not to wear their eyeglasses while filming, and for one of the trench scenes, a pair of vintage spectacles were brought out and offered to the author.  Not wanting to wear a prescription that would make his eyesight worse, the author declined to wear them, thinking it odd that after hearing how medical standards in 1914-15 prohibited men with less than 20/20 vision from serving, the spectacles were now being offered out.   Another extra took the spectacles; the scene in which he appeared never appeared in the film.

        The author was lucky enough, however, to be on hand for a closeup of the troops as Zero Hour struck.  Captain McAdam, unfortunately, was not as lucky, having fallen ill and been replaced for two days by one of the other extras of  "G" Company.  The scene was laboriously set up, with measurements being taken, and the posing of the officer, incorporating his whistle, pocket watch, and pistol.  The scene is visible in the film, though it goes by very quickly.

Wednesday 18 August 1993

        Some more scenes were filmed in No Man's Land.  One elaborate scene in which a stuntman appears to be shot several times in the body (with the back of his tunic being packed with explosives and blood squibs) was filmed.  The author and some of the other "G" Company cadre were filmed running in his vicinity while the stunt was executed.  As was common, this scene, and another scene filmed this night in which a stuntman appears to drown in a puddle, never made it into the final version of the film.
LEGENDS OF THE SHOOT   This article originally appeared in the 5 February 1995 edition of the Calgary Herald.
By Allison Mayes (Calgary Herald)

In the summer of 1993, Andrew Burden went marching off to war.  For four rain-soaked weeks, often for 14 hours a day, the University of Calgary humanities student wore an actual First World War uniform and wielded an antique rifle.  He waited for hours in muddy trenches, huddled around fires to keep warm, then ran full tilt across the slippery battlefield, screaming "Charge!"

      When the director yelled "Cut!" he did it all again - for $6 an hour.  The massive military re-enactment, staged in a rancher's field northwest of Calgary, was part of an epic Hollywood movie, Legends of the Fall.  It's a melodrama in which three Montana brothers (Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas) enlist in the Canadian 10th Battalion (later to become the Calgary Highlanders) and find themselves waging the second battle of Ypres, known to soldiers as "Wipers."
      When the 29-year-old Burden recently saw the movie, which has topped the North American box office for the past three weeks, he was shocked and disappointed.  Endless hours spent staging elaborate battle sequences with up to 800 extras had been reduced to three or four minutes of screen time.  Most of the war had died on the cutting-room floor.
       "I was surprised how short (the battle scenes) were, considering how much time and effort they took," says Burden, who served in the Canadian Forces for five years and had prior experience as an extra on three films.   "It seemed like a waste - a lot of effort for nothing."

      ...Simon Sherwood, a Calgary-bred historian who was the film's military adviser and drilled the extras, says Legends' battle scenes are dominated by close-ups of the lead actors, or shots showing perhaps 10 to 50 troops.  Although the set had a crane camera that could rise 60 feet for a panoramic view of the carnage...audiences see only a few seconds from that perspective.  And a great deal of the extras' labor did not survive.
         "Many, many scenes from the war are not there," says the former soldier, who holds a film degree from Concordia University.  "But when you're editing a film, not every scene will work."

        ...Pitt and Thomas, who were crouched in a shell hole, were suddenly buried in corpses.  Their characters hid there, emerged at dawn and crawled over hundreds of bodies (extras were instructed to hold their breath).  The scene included 50 real amputees playing soldiers with limbs blown off.  None of it is in the movie.

          Is it a case of Hollywood's legendary excess and extravagance?

   Director Edward Zwick, who also made the 1989 Civil War drama Glory, says it's just normal practice.  Reached by phone in Los Angeles, he estimates that the stage war cost $1 million (the film's reported budget was $30 million).   He says the number of unused shots and scenes is nothing unusual.
     "When you film a lot and you work a lot of time, people presume that it's going to take up a lot more screen time.  I think we might have had a cut (an earlier version) in which there was another minute or two (of battle), but there was never much more intended than what is in the movie."
       Responding to rumors around Calgary that he will eventually release a much lengthier director's cut that will restore some 20 minutes of war footage, Zwick laughs.  "No, no.  This is the cut of the movie that I wanted it to be."



       The level of energy and amount of attention paid to detail did much to convince the extras that "their" scenes would play much more importance in the film.  There was also a certain level of ignorance as to what the film was really about, or how small a role the war scenes would play in the final film. Copies of the script were given to the company officers, and some copies of daily rushes did appear surreptitiously, but overall the extras were kept in the dark as to the true nature and content of the film.

Thursday 19 August 1993

         More scenes of the Canadians advancing in No Man's Land were filmed on this night.  "G" Company extras fired two more round of blank ammunition, and some of the Dead Zone scenes were filmed, including one where the soccer ball comes to rest by a dead Canadian.

        For most of the cadre men of "G" Company, this spelled the end of filming.  Those members of the Calgary Highlanders who stayed on the set with "G" Company throughtout the shoot, and whose images are reproduced on these pages, include Sergeant Dennis Russell, CD, Corporal Michael Dorosh, Corporal William Bailie, Private Michael McAdam, Private Michael O'Connor, Private Kelly St. Jean, Private Jason Sartor, Private Justin Barrett and Private Jeremy Barrett.  

Wednesday 11 January 1995

        On January 11, 1995, Legends of the Fall had its premiere in Calgary.  Held in a small theatre in downtown Calgary, no Hollywood stars or dignitaries were present, though His Worship, Mayor Al Duerr said a few words, and the Calgary Highlanders Pipes and Drums performed before the viewing.   Those who had been extras expressed surprise, as Andrew Burden did in the newpaper article above, at how little of their work appeared in the final version of the film.   The movie was discussed over drinks at the Elephant and Castle afterwards, with a reunion of sorts occurring between the cadre men and several other of the "G" Company extras who had been invited to the premiere.  A not unrewarding part of the evening had been receiving a "Good Job" from the mayor as he walked out of the theatre, who recognized the author's band uniform. 

       But it is also rewarding to know that in some small way, the actions of Canada's army in World War One has been represented on film for a mass audience, and even if those actions were not the focus of the film, if nothing else, a weary group of extras gained a small glimmer of appreciation for the miseries suffered by the CEF in France and Flanders.

  

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